


Hounds and Jackals

by haloxix (tenshinokorin)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M, TW: slavery, anime canon only, celtic hodgepodgery, fakeass egypt, no unsolicited concrit please, puppyshipping - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-01 21:35:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6537133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenshinokorin/pseuds/haloxix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>High Priest Set's household has a new acquisition, and he isn't housetrained.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hounds and Jackals

**Author's Note:**

> This is ancient Egypt as presented in a Japanese manga as filtered through a wacko anime dub which was made to shill a collectable card game that's then been autotranslated by google and sourced with Wikipedia with set pieces from Hollywood Bible epics which is _all to the end_ of getting Joey and Seto to make out while heavily oiled and in eyeliner. Don't use it for your book report on the pyramids. Or as a nuanced and objective view of the horrors of human bondage in the ancient world. Or as anything other than some really fine trash. ^_~
> 
> Note on names: Unless given canonical past-life equivalents in main canon (not in video games or tie-ins), characters' modern names have been used. "Joey" is close enough to some Cornish names, and his culture is based roughly on the proto-Celtic Urnfield People, and we don't know for certain what they spoke anyway. Also, I'm lazy.

He woke to a sun that was not his own. It burned in the parched sky like a malevolent eye, harsh and unblinking. His back was stiff with pain, from the lash of a whip and nights spent on the bare earth, like an animal. His mouth tasted like sand and blood, and for a long moment he considered just lying there until death came for him; surely it would not be a long wait under that sky. But the too-near sound of a whip-crack brought him to his feet with a rattle of chains. 

They had moved them in the night, under cover of darkness. He barely remembered. He was no longer chained in a row with countless others in a dank, underground pen, but out in the open. Some sort of a marketplace, he supposed. He recognized some of his fellow captives in the cage with him: the young girl with the braid, the tall man with one eye, the scarred boy. The others blended into an indistinct blur of human misery. 

When the they came across the sea he had been packed in the hold with an old Etruscan man who spoke his tongue, or at least enough fragments of it to be understood, and he had leaned what was to become of him. They would be sold, likely in one of the major markets. It was the usual way, the man said. Northern captives were valuable wares in more civilized lands. The old man had made the journey twice before, but was not overly concerned. Though his back was feeble, and though he had been sold to pay his master's gambling debts, he could read and write in several languages, and knew much of something he called mathematics. He had no doubt his skills would find him a good place, but he was less optimistic about his companion's chances, especially when asked when he could go home. "Hope is a trap," he had said. "Commend yourself to your gods, Joey." 

They were the last words he had heard that he understood. It was two weeks ago, as they docked at a riverside quay. The old man had been bought while they were changing ships. Joey had been whipped for trying to tell him farewell, and then he and the rest were loaded onto a stinking barge, which crept upriver at a snail's pace. Two slaves had died along the way, and been dumped in the river, as unceremoniously as any excess rubbish. Every day the slaves were given hard bread and sour beer from one pitcher, and then drenched with river-water to wash away their filth. He tried to stop caring, as the others seemed to have done, to endure his dishonor with the placid acceptance of a cow led to the slaughter-block. Two months ago, in the cool northern mountains, an enemy tribe had burnt his village to the ground, and he had fought his hardest to save it. He had failed. But he was a warrior, the cousin of a chieftain, a spear-bearer of his people. He kept his head high, while his hope dwindled. Now, it was utterly spent.

Joey wrapped his dirty hands around the pitted iron bars of the cage, and looked out into the street. Plaster dwellings stretched an unknown distance to the horizon, and beyond, farther down the river, massive buildings shimmered in the heat like an unlikely mirage. Blinding white limestone, endless columns, and colossal figures in bright colors dim with distance, all larger than any they had passed on the river. Squinting did not make them come any more into focus. 

A warning shout from the foreman, and suddenly everything was all frantic activity. Across the market floated a covered sedan bright with gilding and adorned with feathered plumes, borne aloft on the shoulders of four huge men who must surely be slaves, but who gleamed with more gold and beads than Joey had ever seen assembled on one person. Their linen kilts were snow-white, they wore blades of a strange and curious shape, and held their burden with the casual ease of young oxen. The common people in the market broke and scattered like a startled school of fish before them. The head slaver groveled his way to the sedan as its bearers lowered it to the ground, babbling an endless stream of obeisance to its unseen occupant. Joey could not understand a word. But without warning a thought came to him, a thought not his own, a thought tinged with boredom and annoyance and the burdens of responsibility. 

_I abhor these inspections._

Gone before he was certain it had even been there. It left a strange golden shadow on his mind, and in spite of the heat, his flesh prickled with cold. Maybe he was dying, he thought. Too much of this sun. But as the curtain was drawn back and the man in the sedan stepped forth, Joey was certain of only one thing: He would not be going home. 

* * *

In the dim shadow of his litter, High Priest Set did not notice the brief glimmer of the Millennium Rod in his belt. He was too busy dreading his chore, too busy thinking of all the other, more useful things he could be doing, too busy listening to Mokuba grill him about the rest of the day's agenda, about the expansion of his private temple, about _dinner_ , for the love of Hathor. For a moment he envied the repose of the dead. 

"Blue lotuses on the tiles. Stewed duck with figs and wine. A votive offering of nine ibises. _No_. Now apply those answers to whatever questions you have left, and let's get this over with. " 

Mokuba sighed, and dutifully scribbled on his scrap of papyrus. For a second he was tempted to serve Set a meal of blue tiles and mummified birds, just to show him what happened when he was careless about his household details, but he refrained. His master was a good master, a good man. Though perhaps a little proud and self-absorbed for his own good, and all too often given to dramatics--especially where his duties and his prince were concerned--Mokuba loved him. So he put down duck for dinner and lotuses for tiles and followed Set out into the bright morning sunshine. 

Set was already standing at the edge of the slave market, enduring the complements and flattery being heaped on him by the head slaver, and deigning to have the tail of his leopard skin kissed. He would have Mokuba wash it later. 

"What do you have?" Set said, breaking into the slaver's praise of Set's Mother's breasts, which must have flowed with the milk of Nuit herself (and were none of this filthy rodent's business if they had). 

"Fine wares, your grace," the slaver said, and began talking up his northern prizes. According to him, they were all princes and princesses, or at the very least fearsome warriors, and worth their weight in pearls. According to Set, they were a bunch of sick and miserable people: sunburnt, hungry, beaten, and they made his heart ache. If his prince were to see this--- but no. Better that he didn't.

"That one," Set said, pointing with his rod at one of the youngest slaves, a girl too young to be left to the tender mercies of a man like the slaver. "And that woman there, and her boy. No, do not part them. You can send those to the palace. And--" 

_Who are you?_

Set struggled to keep the alarm off his face. The rod in his hand had twisted like a living thing, he felt its power hum in his mind. That voice... one of the slaves? Whose soul was so strong as to compel the magic of a Millennium Item? What fool here was more concerned with who Set was than with his own fate? He raked his gaze over the slaves until they landed on a young man standing at the bars of one of the furthest cages, and as their eyes met Set felt something hot and sharp under his breastbone, like a knife, or the touch of the divine. 

"That one." The High Priest knew he should not look so long at the slave. It was beneath him to notice. And yet he could not help noticing. The vivid red welts of whip marks across strong, pale shoulders that surely had never before suffered such indignity. The scar across his ribs--an injury earned in battle, not servitude, and recently healed. The hot rage in those golden eyes, fierce and bright beneath matted braids of hair the color of ripe wheat. The blue traces of barbarous paint. And a body that, divested of filth and shackles, would be fit to be carved in alabaster and placed in a temple among the gods. He was as a raw slab of lapis, shot through with silver, blue as the eye of heaven, wanting only polishing to become a magnificent jewel. One to be prized. One to be cherished. The High Priest's mouth had gone dry. It was a struggle to keep his tone only one of mild curiosity. "....what is to become of him?"

The slaver's cowering would have better suited the most wretched of his wares. "Ah, most honorable, most holy one, that you should notice one of my--"

"Spit it out. I assume you can answer simple questions." 

The slaver's wheedle developed an extra oily sheen. Set kept his eyes on the barbarian, who even in his manacles had the bearing of a warrior. _In a collar of sardonyx and coral, and kirtle of crisp white linen, with his hair trimmed and limbs oiled, he would look like a thing of pearl and gold, as young Horus must have appeared beneath the light of--_

"He's to be sent to the natron mines, your eminence."

Set's vision shattered before him, he looked at the slaver in patent disbelief. "You're sending _that_ to the mines?"

An insolent nod. "Yes, yes. Young and strong, might even get a full two years' labor out of him. You can't break these barbarians for anything else, my lord, so I wouldn't dream of sending him elsewhere. They're useless for household work, they'll steal and murder and escape as soon as given a chance. Even the best ones are brutes too fond of wine."

"Mines are for criminals and animals and that one is neither." Set thrust the golden scepter into his belt, and left his fingers on it. The gesture was twofold in purpose: an obvious reminder of his authority, and a subtle power, known only by a few, capable of opening the minds of men. The slaver's thoughts were a black, tarry hole. He feared and hated the priest in front of him, and craved only money and ease. An unsurprising result. But the boy--

_Grief: A yearning for home, the knowledge that it is gone forever. Fear: for himself, but more for the family whose fates are unknown to him. A sister. A friend. A girl he never told of his love. Anger in no small measure, which is to be expected. Confusion: he does not understand the words spoken in front of him. He does not know the name of this land, or even in what direction home lies. Shame that he has come to this, that his gods did not give him an acceptable death. Hatred, sharp and exquisite, for the destroyers of his home. And pride. Desperate pride. He has so little else. He will not show his weakness to these--_

The power of the Millennium Rod faltered, along with Set's concentration. _He thinks that_ we _are barbarians?_ He put a hand to his mouth to stifle a smile. Unexpected. Both the observation, and his own reaction. Such a spirit. Such a... everything else. Set could feel his face heating. 

"Lord High Priest?" The slaver was still in a half bow. "Surely you don't wish this... savage for the palace?" 

"Wash him off and send him to my house." Set turned on his heel, and did not bother to look at the slaver again. He was thinking of a bolt of gold-fringed linen in his storehouse, and of commissioning a collar for those broad shoulders. Curse that idiot for having him whipped, but some care and unguents might lessen the scarring. "My steward will pay you once the boy is delivered--safely and without further injury. You will be paid fairly for him, but my steward does not take kindly to men who attempt to fleece him. Do I make myself clear?"

The slaver managed to shut his mouth, but it was a considerable effort and a fly got in it in the interim. He was still bowing on his face and invoking the blessings of several mispronounced gods upon Set by the time the high priest got back in his sedan. Mokuba was practically vibrating with excitement as he helped Set settle into his chair. He took a deep breath, prepared to unleash a volley of questions Set knew full well he could not answer. 

"Not one word out of you," Set said, holding up his hand, "until I get home and have a cup of wine and a bath." 

"Are we going to keep him?" Mokuba asked, ignoring his master's command, as usual. "You're not going to give him to the prince like you usually do?"

"He's not a puppy, Mokuba. And yes. We're keeping him, as long as he doesn't murder us in the night." Set closed his eyes. The morning was already blisteringly hot, and his brush with the Barbarian's mind left him feeling oddly drained, as though he had taken on some of that grief himself. "Home now. I mean it."


End file.
